Um, yes, but no.

Anyone who has taught with me knows that I teach with a Diet Coke in one hand (before my pre-diabetes diagnosis, it was Dr. Pepper).  In my classroom I have a few 12 packs that I put the empties in, which I will eventually bring home and recycle.  A student asked if he could have one of my sodas, pointing at what he thought were full 12 packs.  I go, yeah, sure, take a whole 12 pack, and hand him one.  As soon as he takes hold of it, he realizes they're empty and tells me I drink a lot of soda.  Another student, with the same first name as me, says "Yeah, you've got a drinking problem" one, two three, four, " and a coke problem."
Oh, the picture?  It's from my walk around Sugarhouse Park yesterday, and a little break from homework playing with Macromedia Fireworks.  For those of you who don't know, despite being a landlocked state, our official State bird is the seagull.  Something about saving them Latter-Day Saint pioneers from the crickets. 

Not a bad day.

The weather is great today.  I didn't need a coat on the way to school, turned the swamp cooler on vent (no water, just fan) to air out the house, and even took the convertible out for a drive.  Then I laid on the back porch in shorts and a t-shirt listening to the sounds of Sugarhouse, and just relaxed.  Niiiiice.  Good day.  And tomorrow is supposed to be nicer.  Maybe I'll drive the convertible to school?

Hmmm, curiouser and curiouser.

I was in the back yard moving cars around when I heard it.  Same sound I hear once a month or so, the sound of metal intersecting with other metal, plastic breaking.  This was different, though.  It continued into the sound of metal being dragged along the pavement, the first thing that went through my mind was that someone was dragging a trailer without it's wheels.  I made it around the side of the house in time to see a silver truck that was new enough that it's indistinctiveness made it hard to identify, screeching down the road like it was running on a flat tire.  I think it was a Ford, but they all look alike now, and I was focused on the tire.  I went around the other side of the house and out front, expecting to see the hobbling truck on the side of the road just down the street, but it was nowhere in sight.  For some reason it was important enough to get out of the area that they were willing to drive on a flat tire.  Well, I was wrong.  It wasn't a flat tire, they lost the whole damn thing.  They really didn't want to hang around.  Honestly, I'm questioning my eyewitness account, because for the life of me I can't see how they could keep going, as fast as they were, without the front tire.  So, I'm thinking did I see the right truck?  Maybe it was another truck and I just thought it was the silver one?  But then I never did find the truck it came from, so what happened to it?  Then I thought mabye it dropped out of the back of a truck?  This is the most likely explanation, but I swear it sounded like the scraping sound was coming from the silver truck.  You know the Doppler Effect, the way the sound changes as it gets closer to you, passes you and gets farther away.  I swear it fit that silver truck.  But there's no sign of it on the pavement, no damage at all.

..... I'd suck as a witness.  The cops showed up a half hour later, the tire had been moved out of the road (that's when I took the picture).  They stuck around for a little while and left.  Good thing they didn't ask me what I saw.

Sydney

Grad-gee-a-shun.

This is it.  The final stretch.  The light at the end of the tunnel.  The 9th inning.  The 18th hole.  The winter of my content.  However you want to put it.  We went and picked up our graduation duds yesterday on the way to class.  Cost a lot less than I was expecting - $76 bucks, and that included extra for the red doohickey around my neck and a U of U Alumni license plate frame.  Now I just have to decide which car it's going to go on.